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Innarch have designed the Don Café House in Pristina, Kosovo. The idea / inspiration for the design derives from sack filled with coffee grains. The walls of the bar are organically shaped and colored like coffee sack made up of “Plywood” type of wood, whereby the pillars in between are coated with textile coffee sacks. Tables and hanging chandeliers represent the coffee grains lined up asymmetrically in order to generate the impression of being inside a coffee sack. The separating wall has a double function; decorative and functional. Its organic shape consists the most dominant part of the premise enabling a unique feeling of sitting unlike any other one comes across in everyday life. Each of the plywood element was designed individually.

Synthetic Grain by PROJECTiONE utilizes computational design and digital fabrication techniques to mimic natural grain patterns and organic forms with synthetic manufactured materials. A grasshopper definition was created that adjusts parallel lines around a set of points or “knots” based on proximity to that point. The result is a three dimensionally curved, contoured surface made of laser cut polystyrene that lock into slots in a plywood backer. The project was developed to be made at various scales by changing material thicknesses and number of custom panels. This would allow for development as a building skin, retail storefront, or simply the backdrop for a bar. The manner in which the strips engage the wood allow for changing perceptions as the user moves past. While of the same language, each part is unique to its specific condition, similar to natural systems.

It’s difficult to imagine the equating of weathered construction plywood with a painter’s brush stroke, but that what Brazilian artist Henrique Oliveira does with his impressive three-dimensional sculptures made entirely out of layers upon layers of pieces of peeled, old plywood, collected from various construction sites around Sao Paulo. Originally a painter, Oliveira began making his sculptures (some of which look something like gigantic roots bursting into a room) after spying an old, peeling wooden fence outside of his studio. He intuitively saw the peeling strips of wood as something similar to that of a brushstroke laid down by a painter’s hand, and since then, has worked with aged plywood in this way, much like a painter would colour a canvas. To make his sculptures, which range from the enormous to smaller pieces, he gathers plywood strips of all shapes and sizes, before layering them into forms that are sometimes also painted over, in order to give an illusion of uniform smoothness.

To make his sculptures, which range from the enormous to smaller pieces, he gathers plywood strips of all shapes and sizes, before layering them into forms that are sometimes also painted over, in order to give an illusion of uniform smoothness. Plywood is an inexpensive and abundant material for fencing, and instead of leaving old fences to crumble, Oliveira transforms the linearity of such a humble material into mind-boggling and eye-catching spaces, punctuated by tendrils or mounds of almost-living forms. Other times, Oliveira creates cavernous canyons out of this salvaged material, ones that visitors can inhabit. It’s an ingenious way to reuse a product that’s been broken down so much beyond the point of utility; instead of sawdust, art is created. For the curious, there’s many more impressive images on Henrique Oliveira’s website.